Notes on Alston chapter 6
Conceptual relativity: A denial of "metaphysical realism": (1) The world consists of some fixed totality of mind-independent objects and (2) There is exactly one true and complete description of the way the world is (Reason, Truth, and History p. 49).
Putnam thinks the denial of metaphysical realism tells against alethic realism.
Some examples: From mathematics: You can reduce lines to points or conversely. From physics: Do we think of quantum fields as objects or talk about action at a distance from particles? Perhaps also: Do we take space to be absolute or relational? From ontology:
The "counting argument" or "how many objects are there?" argument. It will depend on whether you count mereological sums or not. Also, do we think there are fundamentally substances and properties, or fields, or events? Do we believe in abstract properties or sets of objects that satisfy a predicate which a realist would say expresses a property?
The claim: There is no fact of the matter as to which of these are correct. They are true
"relative to a conceptual scheme."
Realist objection: How could there be no fact of the matter as to whether e.g. properties are nonphysical or are sets of concrete things?
R (Alston): We all recognize that there are claims that are indexed to a particular place (e.g. "It's 4 PM" or "It's warm." Maybe ontological claims are indexed to conceptual schemes in the same sort of way.
Putnam: There are facts that constrain the extent to which we can "make" the world and these come to be after we have a conceptual scheme. So we don't automatically change facts about the world by changing linguistic conventions.
Note that some anti-realist positions (e.g. Berkeleyan idealism) are contrary to Putnam's position. For this reason, Alston prefers to call the view that is in opposition to Putnam's conceptual relativity "ontological absolutism."
Replies to Putnam's conceptual relativity:
1) There is a way of deciding between different contrary ontological views. There is a fact of the matter as to who has it right in the case of each dispute.
R: How could there be? There is no settling ontological disputes, it seems.
R: It doesn't follow from this that there is no fact of the matter as to who is right. Indeed, disagreement seems to imply at least that the parties to it think there is a fact of the matter as to who is right. Furthermore, it could be in the future that we settle some of these debates [NB: Not likely.].
2) The realist already thinks that there are truths that we will never know or could never know. Why should she be concerned with thinking that ontological truths are like this?

3) In reply to the counting argument: Why don't we just believe in universal composition? This isn't a huge concession and there really isn't a big debate here.
R: But sometimes there is serious debate (e.g theism vs. naturalism).
4) Maybe one can claim that many truths are true relative to a conceptual scheme, but some aren't (e.g. truths about conceptual schemes).
R: But it's not clear how this avoids a slide into Putnam's view.
5) Maybe one claim that facts are partially scheme-dependent and partially scheme independent.
R: I (Davidson) doubt this can be done
6) Maybe one can say that ultimate ontology is relative to a conceptual scheme, but this doesn’t affect the truth of most sentences we utter. So they come out true, or can come out true regardless of the scheme we adopt.
Conceptual relativity and alethic realism
The argument that it is inconsistent with alethic realism:
Consider XIII (p) p is true iff p
It looks as though the truthmaker for a proposition are facts that obtain because of a scheme. But this implies that a proposition can change its truth value from scheme to scheme.
R: One might take propositions to have a hidden index to conceptual scheme. So it will be true in all conceptual schemes that in conceptual scheme 1, p is true, e.g.
This helps to avoid the relativist problem above.
R: But it's not clear we should think of all propositions as indexed in this way. There certainly are such propositions, but there also seem to be propositions that aren't indexed to conceptual schemes, and these will vary in truth value from scheme to scheme, violating alethic realism. One would think that there are nonindexed propositions if you think that propositions reflect differences in conceptual content/modes of presentation. And, "in scheme C, grass is green" and "grass is green" have different cognitive contents/modes of presentation.
Doesn't this conflict with Putnam's claim that a correspondence theory of truth is part of metaphysical realism and his rejection of metaphysical realism?
R: It seems not. The correspondence here is pretty minimal.
R: Can't it be true in some scheme that it's not true in all schemes that p is true in C1, and true in another scheme that it is true in all schemes that p is true in
C1? This could be why Putnam embraces an epistemic conception of truth.
It's not clear what the Hegelian alternative is supposed to be. If you think of the world as a mind, then maybe there is some sort of route to an epistemic theory of truth. But saying

"there is nothing outside the mind" of course isn't to imply that reality is a giant mind. It is supposed to contrast with the "relativized Kantianism without noumena" view.